I wrote 19 letters 

a small push in the right direction
spirals out of control without warning

freefalling is sudden
rapid temperature changes stun skin 
and spine stiffens despite u-shaped reaching
while lungs gasp for hidden fragments of oxygen hiding in thin air

when all you wanted was to touch the sun
just once
or once more

without will
without consciousness
without foresight or hindsight to hinder

the day’s extra light comforts the unsettled spirit
of it all
until next year

pasta shells with sockeye
salmon
grape tomatoes
avocado
tossed with olive oil and 
blue cheese
crunchy crackers sesame 
seeds
sunrise colors in a bowl

then…
lemon bars… strawberry 
moons
sparkling seltzer
…icy cold

I buy
sun flowers and
daisies 

There’s a grace to their form
when they stoop to look their child at eye level,
fold to allow guests through the creaking door,
tiptoe to close cabinets, freezers, and drawers. 

They flow open and flourish closed,
mimicking the cycle of night flowers, 
fluttering of a moth’s moonlit wings,
rectangle of unread novel pages. 

rivered canyon of cottonwood,
breezy beneath
towering red cliffs, sun-blazed,
that punch
their luminous blue sky       

Scientists tell us that the sense of smell, more than our other senses, is closely linked with memory. Odors take a direct route to the limbic system and regions of the brain related to emotion and memory.

Can scents help prevent
My identity and brain
From disappearing?

I used to be a dreamer
Not so much anymore
The world has wearied
Me over time, made me
Feel as though I can not
Afford to keep dreaming
It is a loss that I feel into
The depths of my soul 

The Picture Factory
in my head
sends out its
Best Cinematographer
when I read a poem

It has to be someone who
can show me things
has seen through every lense
knows what’s real
and who pretends

Has scrapped banacles off sunken boats,
cried over justice, seen who hits the notes

Flown bullet riddled skies
seen paradise in disguise

Wandered woods, looking at leaves
experienced the wonder of big trees

Watched a flower from seed to bloom
wither in the heat far too soon

scaled to the highest destinations
be distracted by lesser sensations

has pictures of all the stars in the sky
shows poems come alive or where they die

this Cinematographer shows up fast
good or bad, shows things that last

knows how pictures tell a tale
just how words both love and rail…!

O you heavy ended swing on the end

of a wooden handle, how you ante up

the tap at the end of my arm.

An extension you are. 

An extension of my thought brought

right to the point of my laser eyes. 

O you lucite Thor, you are 

the prize in my tool box.

            “Sometimes, in times of trouble,
              when you’re out of hand and your muddy bubbles
              roll across my floor…”

                                     – River in the Rain, Roger Miller

You used to hold my hand while we drove
back roads in Rowan County, convertible flung back
so the sky seemed black sea, susurrus of stars
swimming, spinning, cool breeze in the summer
stirred by voices—our voices—in harmony,
you rising to higher registers, your tenor
to the baritone of my changing chords, a chorus
half lost in the rushing wind of the drive,

your hand on top of mine, near the gearshift,
a father unafraid of conventions of masculinity.

You were married to my mother, until you weren’t,
married to that local redhead, until you weren’t,
booted between jobs, living in a trailer park
at the edge of campus, til you weren’t,
meeting your soulmate, at the end,
until you weren’t
with us anymore–

but loved by so many.  Always, loved
by so many.  A struggling husband,
but a beautiful, beautiful father.

My voice cracking, then and now, I tried
to provide the bass.  So small
and tremulous beneath the strength
of your church choir, decades-of-radio
voice.  A legacy.  Man with the golden voice,
they called you, and you sang the harmony,
Huck’s positive wonder, while I was Jim,
an odd reality, I realize, given their ages
and experience, given their difference
in registers.  You the father, me the son,
reversal of roles, it seemed, so much
of my adolescence, as you struggled
to stay afloat.

And now, the sun is high in the summer,
heat like hot lead weight across my shoulders,
but I wake to wander to the patio and the laptop,
to recount those moments (was it once?  Was it
a number of times—I can’t remember, but it is
too easy to create, to characterize, the entirety
of our relationship in that one image)—

you with your hands on the wheel, wind
in your silver hair, like Chet Baker
in Let’s Get Lost, so young (then and when
you left us for other realms beyond

this coil—winding your way away somewhere,
like that river they sang about, we sang about,
a life and a world twisting
to an unseen sea, 

a father, then, and I the father, now, again
on this picaresque journey
wondering who I am beside
the love of my children.